Yeah we know what you’re thinking, another birthday in the Bodytonic world. After the year we’ve had opening up the Twisted Pepper, in arguably the hardest (and dumbest) year ever to open a new enterprise, never mind a club/venue/cafe based one and when many around us are really struggling, or worse,shutting down, we reckon it’s cause enough to celebrate still being open alone! It’s been a good year, but only in the last 3 months have we really started getting the hang of running the place properly. We’ve made a lot of changes front and back over house over the last 8 weeks with a good few more to come . It has taken time a lot of arguments, patience & hard work, but 54 Middle Abbey St is starting to finally feel like a home in which we could stick around for a while to come.

THE HIGHLIGHTSSome of the highlights that jump out at us include Villagers being the first live act to play the Stage room for an amazingly memorable show, Q-Tip’s legendary after-party with Tip himself Djing to a full house going wild, Modeselektor absolutely tearing the roof off the main room for the Mr Jones Christmas Party & doing a 45 minute encore, the double Berlin Vs Detroit POGO double header with Carl Craig & Ben Klock, DJ Yoda almost causing the Stage room to burst two times over his mind blowing DJ & AV shows, Fabio quoting his epic gig with Benga as the best of the year on BBC Radio 1 show, 20 Piece Parisian Samba band Muleketu giving us the nearest thing to Rio Carnvial in a venue, amazing live gigs from local bands like Hu manzi, And So I Watch You From Afar, Not Squares, Adebisi Shank, The Jimmy Cake, and also most exciting for us, getting our alternative events off the ground like our Banter discussion series with Jim Carroll, Comedy Ireland, Art expos with Crafty Beggars, The Small Print, Syntheastwood, NCAD and our Social Parties with Donal Dineen taking on a residency. We’ve some amazing international guest residencies lined up for 2010 but we’ll leave that for another day to announce.

SURVIVING A YEAR BIRTHDAYSo our “surving a year” birthday date is Saturday 28 November. We’ve a day and night of events and happenings ranging from art, photos , talks and comedy early evening to a serious range of music and AV later on. The idea is, as much as possible, to cover all the sort of events, gigs and music in one day and night that have made the Twisted Pepper what is it over the last year, with a nod to the local as well as the international.

Kicking off the evening will Jim Carroll’s Banter “Review of the Decade” in the Mezz & Cafe with talks and music selections streaming live on the BT web, Comedy Ireland in the Stage with Dead Cat Bounce, leading into POGO with BT favourite Carl Craig in the Basement with POGO residents, Jim Carroll’s On the Record hosting the Stage with the recently signed Dark Room Notes (actually the 1st band to ever play POGO), Not Squares & Jim himself on the wheels. In the Mezz it’ll be a Mud & Mr Jones take over with Melodee, Shortie & SixFootApprentice, while a selection of non-Djing Twisted Pepper regulars will rock theSilent Disco in the Cafe.

THANK YOU FOR THE MEMORIESBig thanks to all the crews who’ve been working hard with us on a regularl basis over the last year, Electric Shock, Richter Collective, ChoiceCuts, U:Mack, Psychotic Reaction, Reach, !Kaboogie, Wobble, Breakology, Breakdown, 174, A$$quake, Crafty Beggars, The Small Print, Thumped.com, Discotekken, Jim Carroll, Comedy Ireland, Spanner in the Works, FVF, Test and not to mention all the promoters, bands & artists who’ve hosted one off shows with us and helped really get the venue on the map and to where it is so far.

And most important big THANKS to all the punters who’ve made the once deemed impossible trek northside to Middle Abbey St to support us and make the atmosphere as rocking as it has been every weekend.